Crab rule
Do you mean China? So, just to frontload this - I don't think China or any Marxist-Leninist states managed to be properly communist, outside of symbolism. There's material reasons for that, too, mostly that the cycle of capital accumulation from labour -> reinvestment into productive forces continued in an exploitative way. Both Mao and Stalin wrote things trying to justify that dynamic persisting, Mao's most damning comment comes from a footnote on a document from 1953, which can be found as "On State Capitalism" on marxists.org. Stalin meanwhile wrote "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR", which has intersting stuff like "The Law of Value Under Socialism", and was very influential in China.
But at the time of the Chinese Civil War and Mao's faction winning out, the US simply wasn't the powerhouse of international meddling it was, yet. Even so, western allies tried to focus their support on the Chinese Nationalists and KMT, but they proved to be too incompetent and disorganised at the time. When the US started to court the People's Republic of China again much later, it was because of the conflict between the Soviet Union and China, as well as there being a huge market for industrial and consumer goods, as well as for investing accumulated (dead) capital beckoning.
Point being: It's a bit of a fallacy to imagine the US as this omnipotent international imperialist, especially before the Cold War. Not that they don't do a lot of meddling, but they aren't able to just do anything to anyone everywhere (even though secret services, be it CIA, FSB or Mossad - they will always want you to believe in their omniscience and omnipotence).
Yupp, have the same general problem. Although maybe not fitting to the stereotype of men and masculinity, I am also basically incapable of getting angry. The only responses I have to stress are shutdown and fawning, I think it (partially) stems from a combination of mostly absent father and an overwhelmed mother with a lot of unresolved mental health issues, that sadly wasn't able to properly handle children being normal children, lots of essentialist sentences about me being horrible still floating in my head from that childhood.
What helps me with anger is aggressive-depressive music. While that channels it just as a primal feeling, it's also a good stimming time. Crying is harder, though, although I had moments - some years back I was able to cry for over an hour while with my best friend, that really was a watershed moment in my life, but it unfortunately did not just make the underlying problems and blockade go away.
Other things that sometimes manage to tease anger and tears out of me is watching some true crime shit, or stuff like holocaust documentaries. Getting angry and disturbed for someone else comes a lot easier for me, but even there, the wall is high to climb.
Treat my answer as what it is - hearsay - but the way I remember reading about it being explained, there is indeed sign-language poetry, and gestures having similar or complimentary movements were considered rhyming, which I guess also makes intuitive sense.
Even just as a technicality, the 1% have not always existed, most tribal societies did not have class divisions like that. Both anthropological studies of existing tribal societies show examples of that, and the archaeological record, too, lays out it was common.
And I understand feeling like that, but it is a pretty weak argument, tbh. It is even hard to engage with, because it's basically starting at a completely different outset of concepts and understanding. Firstly, it reduces socialism to only systems of perfect equality of power - when even Marx acknowledged that this is not only impossible but also undesirable.
Then it just packs all kinds of class arrangements into "The 1%" and "the worker class". Was European feudalism like that? Ancient palace economies? Tribal gift economies? Pre-historic tribal arrangements? The Incan/Andean planned economy? Each with their own complexities, class relations and all showing that the basic idea - humanity evolving along it's material capabilities and necessities - hold true.
Lastly, related to the idea that proper socialism would mean perfect equality of power - sure, corruption in some way has probably always existed. People will also always murder each other in some way. Using that as an argument to say it is impossible to establish a system that minimises murders is how your reasoning sounds to me.
And the system is always what limits or enables the way this corruption and gaming the system plays out. How much property and/or power can be concentrated? Capitalism concentrates vastly more wealth and capital than the systems before it, both for good (e.g. the development of productive forces has enabled many things) and ill. Just because perfection may not be possible, does not mean a system without exchange of value and capital accumulation is impossible (has existed before for sure, yes, even for more complex economies than a small tribe), and it does not mean it has to exist in a way that is more barbarous than the current state of affairs.
That notional aspiration to socialism is basically the ideological smokescreen. It was much more effective in the Cold War era, but it condenses down to: "Suffer through our version of (state) capitalism and exploitative labour for our capital accumulation" - be it by state institutions or even state-sponsored billionaires - "and at the end of it, we promise, there will be communism."
But that "communism" then tends to be like nuclear fusion - always 20 years away.
Personally, I handle it like this: Killing people is never right, but it isn't always the best decision to do "the right" thing. The right thing, morally, would have been, to collectively not create a system that has CEOs and billionaires. Just like, the ideal revolution would only depose and take the power from the ruling classes and would have no need for terror. But it's usually impossible to follow a completely ideal situation.
I think the distinction is important, mainly because the enjoyment of revenge for revenge's sake and violence for violence's sake is pretty real and can become very dangerous to the success of revolutionary action. So it is good to remind yourself of the ideal situation (no killing), as to curb any excesses if at all possible. It does not mean you cannot go against those ideals - in the end, ideals are trumped by material reality and its necessities.
Nothing matters now.
Yeah, hard disagree on that. I was always against holding a false moral high ground and for using all means available to empower the working class. And that has mattered, matters, and will continue to matter. Only, the Democrats aren't doing that. Sure, I can sympathise with Biden and I barely even know why Hunter was so targeted, I paid little attention to it. The thing remains - it is just protecting his own family, when he could do a lot more for people outside of his close circle with his last moments in office - in theory, at least, if he wasn't just another Milquetoast Democrat.
Yeah, and this is just nepotist corruption to boot. It's not like it is consciously leveraging the corruption within the system to put power into the hands of people that need and/or deserve it.
It is 100% worth it. For a way too long time in my life, I assumed it was just "edgy grimdark badass violence", because I had only had a quick look at the first chapter. Without spoiling too much - it is in fact one of the best character explorations out there and masterfully develops from that initially simple-seeming premise.
Personally, it became my favourite manga, and one of my favourite stories told, period.
Thanks, it did trigger a bit of a depressive phase, which I sort of expected, but I managed to get through that one.
Well, I recently lost, like, 50% of my credibility as an intellectual as I stopped smoking. So I guess I am now somewhere in between both ends.
Oh, like German "Fach" then, I assume? That does actually make sense
If these are two of the most powerful men on Earth, it’s surely time to jump on the next SpaceX rocket to Mars.
That is a weird way to spell "get out the guillotines"
Which I would classify as pretty weird, but not really unethical. Besides, I think the comparison doesn't fully work - it's more like, growing a lump on your body somewhere, having it removed, and saying "hey, can I eat that?". Which I would also classify as weird, but not unethical.
There is actually a huge thing to consider with any kind of authoritarian system ideologically: Basically without fail, they will have a "rules for thee, not for me" dynamic behind the scenes. Make abortion illegal? It will still be possible to skirt the rules for the powerful, and pervert the right to control your own body as a woman into the privilege of powerful people - mostly men - to decide if they allow a pregnancy to continue.
Authoritarianism lives, psychologically, from having the people on top, the ones "worthy" in the eyes of ideology, being able to bend or fully circumvent the rules. Even today, this is clearly visible in how rich people, and even more so rich organisations, are treated differently in front of a court, where proper consequences seem to be an exception instead of the rule. This also shows in more fundamental, everyday mechanics of society, think of how the violence monopoly of the state more often than not rests on the tacit acceptance of excessive police violence. Where often, cops and paramilitaries in police roles within states are developing a self-image and identity, along the lines of "to protect society from itself and its horrendous violence, I must become a violent badass" - consciously or unconsciously enjoying the violence and control they can enact, or turning their heads when their colleagues do it, and reserving for themselves and their in-group the privilege to do so.
So, having someone like Trump, a clear narcissistic rapist, being both openly against abortion rights in his political platform while personally holding the belief of abortions being allowed, is no real contradiction at all. He can rest assured that if in power, he would have the privilege to force both consensual mistresses and victims of his assaults to have abortions anyway.
Exactly, it's not like Trump himself is a fundamental Christian with misguided but deeply held convictions. He is a narcissist that wants adoration, power and to be in a special position where you can dodge consequences.
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Jump
something fucked with your attachment style at some point in childhood
Ha, if that ain't the truth with me - and people claim you can't diagonse people over the internet from just their comments. Although I guess if I were to use the outdated terms, I'd definitely have both mommy and daddy issues in that case.
For a second I thought the silhouette was based on this: